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How did this get past the Times editors? It is so clearly designed as an infomercial for selling the author’s go-for-the-gusto change-your-life in 28 days book. Plus the article is dangerous. It perpetuates the myth that psychotherapy is inefficient, ineffective snake oil, relaxing to be sure but snake oil nonetheless. In so doing it erects an unnecessary conceptual obstacle to getting help that someone might need. And it does this solely for the purpose of advertising Alpert's brilliant advance that people need “an aggressive therapist” who’ll tell them what to do and kick their butts till they do it.

Can you see why I got provoked?

The fact is that some people benefit from short-term treatment, even I’m sure from Alpert, and others from long-term, even open-ended treatment. Some patients need one, some the other. And some therapists are good at doing one kind of treatment and not the other. Some both. But no one benefits from distorting research in the service of self-promotion, which is what Alpert apparently did. He disingenuously cherry-picked studies to make himself sound far more reasonable than he is, and also got some of the research fundamentally wrong trying to make his point that people need “an aggressive therapist.”

What Alpert labels a spa treatment, the actual research shows to be a safe, effective treatment, a way of providing care I have seen be life-saving and life-enhancing. Good psychotherapy is done with the patient in mind, not the therapist's media presence. Good psychotherapy is not the expensive gossip combined with a Vince Lombardi football coach mentality Alpert is trying to sell.

What kind of a psychologist would do such a thing in public? Is this what being a “media-friendly” psychologist means? Has my profession really sunk this low? Well, no. No worries on that account. I checked to see if he was a psychologist in New York, a title that requires a license and a doctorate in psychology, and saw that he was not. However, a Jonathan Alpert is licensed as a mental health counselor, which is a masters-level degree that does allow the use of the title of “psychotherapist” which is how he is described in the Times.

Somewhat relieved, but still provoked, I remained curious about who was this man with such a visible public presence who was saying such nasty, dangerous things. So I read the bio on his web-site and was gobsmacked by what I found.

His bio states that he “holds an advanced degree in psychology and is licensed in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.”

Whoa! He’s not supposed to be doing that! That’s a big no-no. No matter how helpful to people he thinks he is, he should not be implying that he is licensed in psychology. In fact, implying that one is licensed in a profession that requires more education than the profession in which one is licensed comes dangerously close to professional misconduct.

So, let me ask, if you read his bio and specifically wanted to see a psychologist would you think he was a person worth contacting? Is it just me or does this also strike you, especially coming from someone as media savvy as Alpert, as an intent to deceive?

In his article he wrote:

“Many patients need an aggressive therapist who prods them to face what they find uncomfortable: change. They need a therapist’s opinion, advice and structured action plans.”

But do they also need a therapist who will apparently say anything to get attention, sell books, and make himself look good, including coming much closer to the line of professional misconduct than anyone should risk?

Lets not forget that the first thing a patient needs from their therapist—and a reader from a writer!—is someone who is trustworthy. Whether Alpert meets that initial condition is up to you.